Journey of Forlorn Hope
by zelasswilder
Summary: When Tethe'alla's mana begins to decline, their chosen, Zelos Wilder, must go on a journey to restore the world's energy.
1. Prologue

What happens when you die? People who have come close to leaving this world claim they saw a striking light and that it was a strobe-flashing with morsels of their miserable lives until their hearts overflowed with an overwhelming yearning to live. That was all fine and dandy for the sake of a spiritual, camp-fire narrative, but what is it that happens when you _die_? Heart stopped cold in a hollow chest cavity. Brain activity and electrical impulses padlocked like a lightning struck circuit-breaker. Body turned clammy. Skin faded into pallid and organs deflating deep inside the innards of a human's shell. Dead.

When you walk into that bright light after watching the slide-show of everything you've ever done and everything you could only manage to wish to achieve, what lies beyond it? Does anything lie beyond it? Or is that light just a lie that beckons forth an existence of complete and total darkness? And that begged the question as to whether there was even an existence beyond the light at all. After all of this is said and done-the petty ambitions of the human race having turned to dust and the goddess Martel long since completing her duty to cover up the sins of those who lacked moral efficiency-does anything even matter anymore?

Sebastian once told him after Father died that death is like going home, but what does that even mean to somebody who has never felt at home? Perhaps he'll be the first angel condemned to Hell. Sometimes he sits upon the seat that his mother sat on for so many days and he mirrors her posture, rigid and statuesque. He stares out at the graves of his father and mother and he thinks. For hours. Just thinking. What happens when you die?

He sits there now, contemplating those thoughts. What happens when you die?

"Master Zelos." The soft voice emanates from the doorway would have been unannounced had the butler not held a tray in his hands. It clinks against the bottom of a single empty glass and two bottles of unmarked substances as Sebastian totters across the polished estate's floor. The bottles are unmarked simply because branding the bottles would lead to further incrimination on Sebastian's part. Zelos doesn't want that. Besides, he knows what is in those bottles without even looking at his servant. So, Zelos does not turn and he most certainly does not look. He instead shuts his eyes and closes off the view of his parents' graves. No light now, only darkness.

"What'll happen, Sebastian?" The older man is silent. Zelos hadn't exactly expected much of a rapid-fire answer to his question in the first place so he waits patiently for his response, should he even be lucky enough to receive one.

"It will be painless."

Well, isn't that rather bold of him to say? Zelos is pretty confident Sebastian knows nothing of poison and how painful the effects are on a regular human's body, let alone the effects that might strike a chosen of his stature.

Zelos finally turns his head thirty degrees to his servant. His eyes flutter open and his gaze falls unenthusiastically upon the tray. One tall wine glass, a bottle of the dark wine it would hold, and then a smaller bottle, dwarfed by the other two items on the tray perhaps by size but certainly not by importance. The delicate container, smaller than an infant's bottle, holds the poison Zelos chose specifically for the ending of his life. The black tar of a substance glistens despite the thickness of the bottle and the toxicity swirls as Sebastian rocks from resting his body weight from his left leg to his right in an uncharacteristic show of uneasiness.

All the same, the poison hadn't been what Zelos had been asking about. "I mean after. After I…" Zelos swallows back a phantom lump in his throat. He stares helplessly at Sebastian for some input—as though Sebastian would know anything of what happened past this life.

"I imagine it will be better than this, sir." It's a quiet speculation and Sebastian's voice is as soft as when he had entered the room.

As though laughter is a bubbling creature of madness that lived inside his heart, a chuckle finds its way out of his chest. Zelos twists his body about and he slides out of his seat. Still laughing he ambles across the room and procures the tray from Sebastian. "Go ahead and take a walk, man," the young man says. "Wouldn't want you getting blamed for my poor decision making abilities, now, would we?" He raises his head a bit after regarding the contents of the tray to force a smile at Sebastian.

The butler shifts again. "If it is all the same to you, Master Zelos, I would prefer to be here." Not-so bold words from a man who would be unemployed anyway after the day was finished but the younger man had to give him points for loyalty.

Zelos's grin fades. Gazes lock for what feels like an excruciatingly prolonged time. Finally, he tears his stare away to the tray in his hands. Steps drag and shuffle as Zelos approaches the nearest table and, with sweating palms and nerve-numbed fingers, he sets the platter down upon its top. The neck of the wine bottle is warm when he grabs it and vibrations gurgle in quick rhythms as he pours the fermented juice into the glass. Sebastian supervises on the other side of the tabletop. The wine settles in the glass for a few seconds—minutes—and maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all—what happens—what happens when his heart stops—what will happen when he dies—"Sir." Sebastian's voice is hoarse and, when Zelos finally looks to him, there are tears in the older man's eyes.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just—I wanted to let it settle…" He brushes his hands against his pants before snatching the tiny bottle with shaking hands that only still the moment Sebastian rounds the table and stands beside him to his left, his own hands folding over his master's as he forces a steady calm onto the young man's nerves.

Zelos gasps. "Sebastian." He feels so much like a child now that he wants to scream. "Why did it have to be me?" The question curls and ends in a whimper.

"They had to have somebody, sir… They always have to have somebody."

Zelos turns back to the glass to find the poison is poured. "I don't-t—"

"I know," Sebastian says.

Zelos swivels his body about, turning to the window and out towards the horizon and—And there it is. That omnipresent tower. The reason he has to do this. They were making him do this. If he is going to die for nothing he is going to do it on his own terms, in his own house, with what little family he has.

Without any warning to Sebastian, Zelos seizes the wine glass and chugs the contents in one hasty motion.

The effects don't feel gradual at all.

Sebastian gasps somewhere a thousand miles away from Zelos's ears. The redhead grabs the edge of the table, already being hit with something that makes his stomach leap about in screaming protest. There are hands all over his body, like he has fallen into a sea of the groping appendages. Then one really large flat hand presses into his side, fingers compressing nerves into muscles into bone so that Zelos is just sure his entire body is going to turn purple from the bruising. Zelos shuts his eyes, no use trying to keep them open since they too have lost their focus in life. The largest hand is so very uniform, taking Zelos into its flat palm and letting him lie there. It does not curve in, perhaps from fear of more skin touching the redhead than is absolutely necessary. It keeps him high up in the air while he dreams of what he will see when he finally leaves this hell while the other little hands flip the chosen over from his side and onto his back like a fish out of water being held in order to be sliced open, its spine cut out and its body ripped apart for the good of everybody else (minus the fish). His eyes are now being forced open by more hands, the gentleness gone from their extremities and switching to the rough urgency required to pull somebody out from the brinks of death.

Fingers shove their way into his desert-dry mouth and down into his scaly throat, kicking up a hundred watt powered gag reflex out from the chosen's fading body. He retches into the carpet, almost rolling back into it in his dazed state only to find more hands pulling him away from the pile of his own innards that now stained his snow white carpet.

The hands are off for just a second after shoving him away from the vomit but it is only a moment before they're back and tugging open his lips and forcing his jaw into a gaping expression befit of a passionate choir boy. Hands invading him, still pressing into the back of his throat where his uvula screams in protest and erects armies of acidic vomit out and onto the hands and onto Zelos.

His body grows weaker than he thought could ever be possible. Sinking into the curvature of a figure that had taken shelter on the hand with him that he did not know and could not see, Zelos gives in to unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 1

"How do you have any confidence at all in him? He is weak! He is selfish!"

"He tried to kill himself so he didn't have to save the world!"

"He is unworthy of a chosen!"

He woke up on and off to choppy arguments whispered and hissed in the hallway between people and voices he didn't recognize. Given the tone though, Zelos figured he would do well not to pick up any new company in these people. There were undertones of just having let him die, to let Seles do this instead. But no. He was _the_ chosen. Let's be real here, his job qualification was right there in the title. He was chosen. Besides, they could never just let him do what he wanted, not even if that thing was to die.

A grunt escaped his throat and he tried to open his eyes, only to find they were glued shut by thick, layered mucus that swathed around his eyelashes and clung to his skin. How long had he been out? A day? A _week_?

"I think he's awake," a boy's voice, timid in an uncomfortable way, announced at the end of his bed.

There were palms up and under his body now, rising him into a sitting position. Despite his efforts, Zelos's head lolled to the side and into the nook of whoever was stuck coddling his sick body. The breath of the nursing individual cut off from the touch of hair against flesh—someone who was male and stunk of the woodlands and metal work. His clothes were made of something body-hugging and it clung to tight taunt muscles, turning what should be a soft, human body into a hard, statuesque creature.

The breath picked back up after a few seconds, followed by the man shifting his body underneath Zelos and reaching outwards for something that Zelos couldn't see with his eyes fastened shut. The body slipped slowly back into its previous position and then the hand that had previously rested against the small of Zelos's back skated upwards to gently tug the chosen's head away from the neck he had been nestled against.

"He is awake, right?" There was such an amount of uncertainty in the boy's voice—as though Zelos would have had to be completely unconscious to resort to such a state of physical apathy.

"More so than he has been in the past few days," the man beneath Zelos spoke. He had a deep voice—a strong voice—stoic and dark. It reminded the sick man of his father; back when his father had still spoken to him.

Zelos's body involuntarily shuddered at cold, wet clothe touching his eyelids. The speaker had begun wiping at Zelos's eyes, freeing them of the snotty glue that came from sleeping far too long. As soon as Zelos's eyes were freed from the adhesive weight, they fluttered open into half centimeter slits and were blinded by the white illumination of a lamp's light-bulb that shined by his bedside.

It took a moment for his eyes to remember how to focus and he could almost feel his retinas being weighed down by pain medication and muscle relaxants. Before he could rake in all the new things around him with true clarity, he saw colors: red, black, purple, and pink. They racked in and out of focus for a few moments, and those in the room were more than happy to sit in silence while he tried to make sense of everything.

He was in his own bedroom, which meant these strangers had been let in by the king. The strangers, there were three: the boy, the man, and a woman who stood in the back corner who seemed to want to be as far away from him—Sheena. Sheena was there.

Sheena was not a stranger. Sheena, the sweet girl whom he had known for many years—the Mizuho ninja who spit fire at those who dared tried to oppress her. Sheena, the girl he taunted and prodded at because of said verbal pyromaniac tendencies. The girl with a physique that could kill hearts and bodies. Sheena, who was strong, and fast, and beautiful in a way that many other women could not attest to being. Sheena, the teenage assassin. Sheena, the closest thing he had ever had to a friend, discarding Sebastian due to his payroll.

She caught him staring at her, his eyes confused, and she crossed her arms tighter over her chest in pure discomfort. Her brown eyes snapped to the wall and she shifted her body so as to avoid him seeing much more of her.

She faded out now and his head rolled about on weak shoulders to try and look at the man underneath him, the one who wore a nauseating amount of purple, but he was unable to gain any angle that allowed him so much as a glimpse of the man's face. He tried, and he probably looked unquestionably idiotic as he did so, his head twisting about and his mouth gaping as he tried to get at this person he didn't know who was so close to him. Still, he found the actions were only succeeding in exhausting him. Groaning, he turned away, his eyes falling to the ground as he started to pant.

He wondered if this was how Seles felt during her attacks, if even moving her head pained her and his heart wrenched in his chest at the thought.

"Are you feeling better?"

The boy again. The boy in the red. He wasn't so much a boy as he was a teenager. He stood at what appeared to be around 5'8" with the help of some boots with lift, Zelos was sure just by way of instinct. He had way too much hair that stuck up like he'd just put his finger in an electrical socket, although it was much more likely that the imbecile probably just didn't know how to style it when he woke up out of bed, likely subscribing to a philosophy of 'good enough' when he looked in the mirror.

And that philosophy seemed to translate into his other fashion decisions as well, because that much red only looked good on behalf of a suicidal bull-fighter, not on some gawky, cow-lick headed boy. The red clothe escaped being the worst part of the outfit simply by way of the uncomfortable number of belts that wrapped around the kid—four on each side of his body, strapping him in as if he honestly believed the bullshit metaphor of life being a roller-coaster and thus felt the need to be seat-belted in for the ride. Zelos couldn't see below the brat's knee, but he could see that this kid's—of course, red—boots didn't cut off until mid-thigh and that was just all sorts of uncomfortable as well, wasn't it?

"Are you sure he's okay?" the boy turned his young brown eyes to the man in Zelos's blindside. "He's not exactly responsive."

When the boy spoke, Zelos felt a change in the behavior of the man who held him and he passively wondered what their relationship was. Judging by the tightness of both the mens' outfits, Zelos hypothesized that maybe they had first crossed paths while shopping at the same grotesque store.

"I'm not okay," Zelos finally spoke.

He immediately regretted it. His voice was sandpaper and his throat felt even worse than that, his larynx had rotted from the inside out. How much of the poison had they made him retch onto the floor? Did they keep going until his body was an empty vessel, just to make sure nothing got left behind? That part of his memory was black and hazy; he really couldn't be sure of what had been done.

The boy's eyes snapped back to Zelos. "Do you want me to get the doctor—"

"I tried to kill myself and you want to get the doctor? Prolong my sad little life? What for, huh? Tell me what you want, brat, because absolutely nothing you can do is going to help me just short of piercing me in the fucking heart with the closest, sharpest object." He paused for effect, but only an effect that would allow depth to his words and discourage the combatant of anyone else's. Then he continued, using the husk in his voice for the sake of dramatics now. "Are we clear? Because, if we're not, I'll be more than happy to illustrate the preferred technique on _you_."

Yeah, it hadn't been one of Zelos's happier speeches, and, typically, he was a little better at disguising his inner self-loathing, but the kid had pissed him off and it wasn't as if anybody in the room was unaware of his personal detest. There was little doubt in his mind that these people were here by order of the church or the king—that they would be interested in The Chosen of Tethe'alla, savior of the land, as opposed to Zelos Wilder, the suicidal wretch of society. That meant a lot of different things, but on the whole it meant that they couldn't hurt him so he would say whatever the fuck he wanted.

The boy stared at Zelos, his expression reading something along the lines of either shell-shocked or mentally handicapped. He did not speak, although the man under Zelos had tensed.

"I don't know what you're thinking," the chosen growled, his voice growing louder and rougher as he spoke, "walking in here and pretending to care about me. If you had cared about me, you'd 've let me die. How long have you been in here, you idle-headed shit? Huh?" It hurt so much to speak, but the way the boy stood and took it, Zelos couldn't stop. He just couldn't. It was so easy to lash out at this kid. "How long have you been watching and waiting with your friends for me to wake up—so that you can throw me to the lions? So you can _force_ me to take my rightful position, to fulfill my predetermined birth-right on behalf of selfish people who don't like me—who have done _nothing_ for me!" He felt saliva splash out from his mouth, spitting at the boy as his anger took flame and rose up in his body, morphing him into a cobra enslaved by his rage, causing him to scream and lash out in fury. "You want me to _shift __and __change_ for them! I'd just as soon be dead than be their hero."

"You seem very fond of the idea of dying, chosen one. You might as well die for others and have some amount of charitable substance to the reputation of your person to make up for the rancid life you have lived up until this point," the man underneath him said, emotionless. Purple-coated skin slid out from under Zelos, causing him to lose his crutch and fall back on the bed weakly, thus removing the boy with a mortified expression out from his sight and for his view to be flooded instead by the intricately decorated ceiling above him. And that was the point, wasn't it? Because, while the boy was obviously ignorant and naïve, the man knew better than to take Zelos seriously. It had been so easy to render Zelos' harsh words as meaningless. All he had to do was step away and the redhead resorted back to his weak meager self, a turtle pinned on its back by nothing except gravity, unable to do anything without the help of others.

Zelos turned his head and glared up at the man in purple, finally getting to really see him. However, his features were blocked off by the outfit and style of the man himself, as though everything about him was designed to spite Zelos. Purple's hair hung over almost all of his face in spouts, and it seemed he was also a fan of the wake-it-up and wear-it fashion trend because this guy's hair was absolutely atrocious as well. More buckles—maybe the two were brothers—that wrapped around Purple's body, as if there was any chance in hell that suit was going to come off just short of being sliced off with a high-precision, laser cutter, and all of the features listed paled in comparison to those goddess-awful shoulder pads and bug-shell tails on the back of the whole hideous ensemble. But, putting his outfit aside and looking into the one eye he could see, Zelos knew that this man was not stoic. His emotions could be clawed out and exploited just like the boy's had been.

"I would much rather die by my own actions, by my own prerogative, than to fight for people who never even thought of fighting for me," Zelos said.

"Say what you will," the man was not moved, "but nothing changes the fact that you are required, by title of the chosen, to fulfill this quest."

"Oh yes," Zelos laughed. "Restore the world of mana. Get everybody nice and happy and living off the fat of the land while I fly away to heaven—become an angel. 'One to save a village' and all of that, eh? I know exactly what this situation calls for, beetle-back. I always have. That doesn't mean I'll do it. Honestly, you'll be lucky if you can get me out of this room—"

"Kratos, Lloyd, go wait outside," Sheena finally spoke. Zelos had wondered how long she'd be able to withstand idly while watching his tirade. Purple turned and looked to the area Sheena had been standing the entire time. For what seemed like ages, he gazed at her before he finally left, another pair of boots resounding in an slurring drag of feet over carpet as the boy trailed out after him.

Sheena walked up slowly, sitting down beside Zelos on the bed with great care. She eased her hand under him and hoisted him up the bed so he didn't have to strain to look up at her and then her gloved fingers clasped at a pillow that had been flung on the floor and she used that to prop his head up even more. He didn't realize how much his chest was heaving until she stopped adjusting him and just began to stare down at his sickly form. Tears stung the back of his eyes and he tried so hard not to let them free. She already thought so low of him. He could see it in her eyes. He didn't need to water any more of her disappointment—there was no need to let it grow into a fleet of pity.

"What are you doing here, Sheena? What are you doing with those—those—those pretentious assholes?" His voice broke on the obscenity and Sheena fiddled with the edge of her rose-colored sash quietly, turning her gaze to the wall.

"You idiot."

"Excuse me?" Zelos gawked up at her.

"You're an idiot. How could you… How could you try to do what you did?" Her eyes were wet.

He broke into a smile, letting it curl up the sides of his face. "Not up for mourning me just yet, huh?"

"You're so selfish. You hold the key to so many people's happiness and you would throw it away to make a statement, just like your father?"

Now, that had hurt. His father's suicide was not something people talked about, at least not to him. He liked it that way. He knew he would always be associated with the coward of a man who Zelos felt more comfortable calling a sperm donor than a father, but he didn't have to hear about it. Sheena didn't seem to have many cards to play at the moment though if she was reaching in and prodding at spider-web covered daddy issues. "I am not dying for people who did nothing for me while I was alive," Zelos snarled, the smile gone. "I refuse."

"Then do it for me. Do it for my people." She leaned over and grabbed his wrist, and, _wow_, Zelos couldn't remember the last time he touched a woman outside of flirting, let alone the last time a woman had initiated the contact.

"That's awfully telling, that you would assume I'd die for you," he commented, turning his head away to the opposite side of the room.

"I'm not assuming." Her voice is confident, and actually kind of insulting. Zelos had never before thought of dying for anyone, let alone Sheena, and, while he might have done some reckless things on her behalf, it had nothing to do with her personally.

But she had instances to back it up. Instances where his reckless nature had won and beaten the odds and helped the two of them out of some sticky situations. Things they had done together that could most definitely be categorized in the same area of self-sacrificing for the sake of others—his life for the sake of Sheena's, specifically.

"I would do it for you."

She was still talking, still trying to get him to live the rest of his life so he can die for her.

He turned and took in the sight of the young ninja, ample breasts that pushed up against her knees in a common show of bad Sheena posture and good Sheena genes and her hand clung to his hand still while her lips pursed. Then there were those eyes, brown, just like the two men who had been in the room before, but not in the same way. Young and hurt, and he almost might say he saw himself in them, but then he realized that Sheena would never do what he had done, and that selfishness, the selfishness that he was so accustomed to living by, separated them so much that there could never be any of himself in that gaze.

"Please, Zelos. People are dying because of this. You can fix it," she pleaded, tears budding. "I know you think you're just dying for a bunch of faceless people, but you just can't think about it like that. It'll ruin you."

"So what should I think of it as, Sheena? Other than how it obviously is, which is guiding the lamb to the slaughter, what are you proposing I do? Lie to myself?"

"I'm not asking you to lie. I'm just asking you to see it differently," she insisted, her temper starting to rise.

"Seeing it differently is the exact same thing as seeing it as it isn't, hunny, and you know that."

"How can you sit here and tell me that!? How can you sit here and do this to me—to everybody?! I don't understand how you can justify this behavior, it's—it's—it's—"

"Selfish? Oh yeah, that's what I keep hearing," he laughed. "I'm selfish, I'm idiotic, and I'm unworthy of being chosen." He snickered again, letting the chortle sour up his words. "Believe me, Sheena, whatever you want to call me, I've heard it before, and considering I still chugged that poison, you callin' me the very same things isn't going to make my opinion evolve into anything different, let alone some bullshit, moral crusader crap like you're rooting for. So, why don't you do us both a favor and go outside so you can tell your hideously dressed friends that I'm not going to do the journey and they can kiss my bedridden, chosen of regeneration _ass_."

She whipped her hand away so fast that it hurt but it didn't hurt nearly as much as the slap to his cheek that caused him to roll over completely to the left side of his body and then onto his stomach. With a swift motion, she pushed herself up and out of the chair before storming out of the room. She was emotional leverage hired by the church to be sure. Just a pawn in their games to convince him to do as he was told.

The joke was on them though. Just because Sheena was his only friend didn't make her that good of a friend. They'd have to do better than that. Zelos was a lot of things—cowardly, childish, shallow, and tainted just to list a few—but he knew he wasn't stupid. He could lie down and take a lot of verbal abuse with stride, but the one thing he refused to let sink in was the idea that he was less than intelligent, because he knew how people were. He watched them, smiles on their lips while they speak of terrible acts, while they spread malicious lies like wildfire, and he knew that those who opposed them were labeled stupid only because people, by nature, do not accept that which is different, and maybe they were right. Maybe the stupid thing was not to blend in, because there was absolutely no intelligent reasoning behind the idea of being different if the flock is so heavily advanced. Zelos had yet to see an instance though where, when the situation came that an individual rose up and fought a collective that was heavily weighed down by traditions they didn't understand, that the individual was the idiotic one out of it all.

The individual always lost though.

The door opened again, quick, just as Zelos had managed to finally get onto his back again. The door would have slammed up against the wall if it hadn't been for the fact that the man, the one Sheena had referred to as Kratos (or maybe this one was Lloyd?), had his grasp still tightly clenching the doorknob. He gave a quick jerk and the door shut swiftly behind him.

"You'll have to tell the church that heart-to-hearts don't do much in the way of swaying opinions if they come from abhorrently dressed strangers," Zelos said, turning his head to look at the wall childishly instead of at the purple abomination that had just waltzed back into the room.

"I didn't have much confidence that Sheena would be able to change your mind. You're very stubborn." Purple took a seat where Sheena had been sitting, his posture rigid like he had a stick shoved straight up his ass that stretched to the base of his cerebral cortex. "We have to try though; people can have a change of heart."

"I can't say I can attest to that much, but whatever you say." The redhead rolled his eyes.

"I'm sure you'll find that it is much more common than you might have originally supposed after this conversation," Purple said in an even tone.

Zelos turned his attention to the man, curiosity spiking ever-so-slightly, and he raised his eyebrows. "Well then, I'm all ears," he said in a tone that indicated that he was not at all going to be all ears to what this man had to say and he also reserved the right to tear everything that came from the mouth of this fashion disaster apart until he passed out from exhaustion.

"If you do not undergo this journey, we will kill your sister."

Well, Zelos would have been lying if he said he didn't appreciate the lack of bullshitting dialog that would typically lead up to such a threat. Although, it did prickle at his skin like bumping into a cactus to know that Purple said it with such confidence and conviction and, fuck him and his fucking hair and his fucking ugly outfit, _arrogance_.

"You try to kill Seles and I kill you," Zelos snarled, anger flaring in his chest and rising up to make itself known by way of his hoarse throat. "I swear to everything holy and unholy and whatever is in-between that if you so much as look at Seles I will rip your fucking heart—"

"You are weak now," Purple casually stated, lifting himself up from the chair as if to say the conversation was coming to a close, which was funny since Zelos still had a hell of a lot to tell this prime grade piece of horse's ass. "Can you confidently assure your sister's safety while you sit here and rot with your self-afflicted wounds?"

"I can confidently assure you that if you even think about my sister, it'll be the last thing you ever live to regret!" Zelos roared, his throat clenching towards the end in protest for so much exercise with so little energy.

The man turned and looked down his nose at Zelos. "I don't have to do anything to her. All I need is for you to begin the destined journey."

His voice was still so even. Zelos wanted to punch him in the face. But it was either him or Seles. He was going to die anyway, but she didn't have to, right? … Right?

"If I agree to this and I hear of anything happening to her," he began to warn, but Purple lifted his hand.

"Agreeing to this guarantees her safety," he assured.

"Sebastian too," Zelos suddenly remembered. "If I do this, Sebastian gets to live his life, carefree. You give him money so he doesn't struggle, and you give him a house."

"Are you really in the position to be negotiating anything with me?" Purple inquired.

"Sebastian gets off scotch-free or I don't do it," which was a lie. He loved Sebastian, but if the situation called for Sebastian versus Seles, Zelos wasn't going to lie to himself by saying he would try to save them both. He'd go for Seles every single time.

"A sick sister and an old man for company," Purple mused, "Given your reputation, it's odd that these are the people you care for the most."

Zelos looked at the wall in annoyance that this asshole was even still in the room. "Yeah, well, I'm an odd guy."

"Indeed." Purple turned his head. "I will see to your requests, chosen one. Recover swiftly and rest as much as you can. Then we will go on the journey to regenerate the world."

When Purple left the room, Zelos sunk into the covers, grabbed his pillow, and attempted to smother himself by shoving his face into the rich cloth. He just ended up falling asleep.


	3. Chapter 2

It should have taken much longer than a week before he could even get out of bed to take a piss, let alone go on some justice-seeking, self-sacrificing adventure. Yet, much to Zelos's dismay, on the third day of his recovery, his pain had declined to the point of being decidedly "apt and able" to "save the world" thanks to Meltokio's qualified medical professionals. And, oh boy, did the city just love that. Really though, the nobles just soaked it all up like aristocratic sponges while the peasants smiled wide and dirty mouthed. They applauded and cheered for him, standing side by side regardless of their neighbor's class, and he walked out of the gates accompanied by his merry band of assholes and Sheena. They cheered, half because this was the beginning of their chance to eat fresh and succulent fruit, fat from mana, while also escaping the rule of those less-than-sweet Desians who were popping up everywhere, although they weren't within the capital as of yet.

The other half of the glee was attributed to the fact that Zelos was never—and repeat that so it sinks right into your bones and marinates your skin so that even the thought of sweating or breathing would send the idea seeping out of every single one of your pores—_never _coming home.

Really, it almost flattered Zelos to know that the citizens of his hometown detested him so much that they would discard their ongoing class war just to watch him leave side-by-side and cheering. He had heard that there was going to be a festival that night in the city; all classes welcome—everything free. He wondered if he could stop any other social enigmas just by being himself and by being so resented.

He stopped wondering this when his group of four reached the outskirts of Meltokio. Sheena, Kratos, and Lloyd. Lloyd being the idiot in red and Kratos being the asshole in purple. Sheena on any other occasion would have been his safe haven. However, now she ignored him, blaming him for his attempted suicide, which was understandable to a point, but he was a bit starved for something akin to companionship and he sure as hell wasn't going to buddy up with the two personifications of shit fashion. Sheena didn't seem to care about his lack of entertainment or conversation, because she didn't encourage any communication with the redhead.

It was _beyond_ frustrating. Not only did he have to go on a journey to sacrifice his life for the sake of a bunch of people he didn't even sort of like, but the journey was looking like it was going to be boring as hell right along with it. Really, life was just too much sometimes. And, yeah, they were all armed to the teeth and ready to take out any monsters that pushed their way to the group, but the monsters were lame and weak. Even if enough of them attacked for it to be a challenge, Zelos, aside from being discouraged from dying early in a battle due to his status, wasn't able to fight to his full potential just yet due to his recovering from his attempted suicide.

He almost regretted trying to kill himself. For a lot of reasons it turned out.

Reason number one being that he was barely out of sight of the Meltokio horizon and he already felt like he had been slammed into by a huge wave of physical exhaustion.

Reason number two being that it had gotten Sebastian into a sticky situation back home in a city prison cell, his freedom only guaranteed after Zelos had succeeded (which was beyond ironic. The only way for Sebastian to escape life in prison for helping Zelos try to kill himself was for Zelos to go and get killed. Tethe'alla never failed in displaying A+ logic in all areas of life it appeared).

Reason number three, this one being the most annoying of all the reasoning listed and not listed, was Lloyd.

The kid was dumb, and Zelos wasn't saying that for the sake of being belligerent. No, sir. The kid was about as smart as the dirt they were walking on. Not only that, but he was young and naïve and wowy gee why in the heavens would anybody ever want to _die_ they must be really sad let me hug them—no.

Stop it.

_Stop it, Lloyd_, Zelos wanted to scream.

Because every time Zelos slowed down or sped up or ate or breathed or blinked or did anything, Lloyd was there, peering and frowning and asking if he was okay.

It was so frustrating because anybody with eyes could see that obvious fact that Zelos was not okay. He had tried to kill himself. He was being blackmailed into sacrificing his life for everybody on the planet, which sucked hard enough just by that description alone, it never had needed any embellishing to get a bit of sympathy, but now? Now Zelos had an all new reason to be pissed. He was sacrificing his life for everybody, yes, but he was also dying for Lloyd. The stupid wide-eyed brat was the last person on the planet he wanted to die for. Hell, if Zelos had to do anything for him, he did the exact opposite. That went for everything. Lloyd wanted rice for dinner? Well then, they would be eating soup by request of Zelos who typically got to decide what they ate simply as a courtesy from Kratos and Sheena. It was the least they could do if they were driving Zelos straight for the slaughter-house to at least let him pick his last few meals.

And, holy hell, Zelos initially could not believe how much that pissed off Kratos. Oh yeah. Brothers, they had claimed (although the relationship was hella weird so there was no telling what else was underneath all those family-blood blankets) when Zelos had finally been given proper introductions to the two. Zelos had decided that the reason Kratos's panties always seemed to be in a bunch was because of his spandex suit, but they got even more bunched up when Zelos took his frustrations out on the boy, ten years Kratos's junior. Kratos would drag Lloyd away or send Zelos a death glare when the redhead's taunting flared. Sometimes Zelos glared right back. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes, when Zelos felt like being especially difficult, he would just decide that they were done walking for the day and he would plop right on down on the ground, declaring this the new camping spot. Sheena never appreciated that, but she never was alone in her frustrations and Zelos had figured out years ago that Sheena was nearly impossible to please as Kratos was emotionally stunted. Kratos shared her distaste and openly displayed it with a jaw clamped shut and a body held taunt. He would cross his arms, making noise like a dragon exhaling from its nostrils, and look away from Zelos as though the sight of him was disgusting. Lloyd, however, would look over his shoulder, since he always led the group with endless energy, and those broad shoulders would slump and he would frown.

Today, as they reached the third hour of walking, Zelos decided this was bullshit, as typical of the usual epiphany that led to an impromptu camp set-up. He brushed his hands along the back of his duster to pull the fabric tight so it didn't bunch up underneath him and he dropped like a rock, letting his feet swing out as though he was partaking in a street dance that ended just as soon as it had begun. "You've gotta be kidding," Sheena snarled as soon as she heard the grunt and thump from the chosen. Kratos let out a growl. Lloyd stopped and turned, as per usual.

His bright brown eyes blinked like some naïve deer just begging to get slaughtered and put in between two slices of bread. Or in a stew, maybe. "Are we going too fast?"

"Yeah." Zelos reckoned. In reality, they'd been going a little slow, but he'd never complain about a sluggish pace considering their destination was about as appealing as Hell itself.

"I guess we can rest then. I mean, it's probably for the best to get bearings now as opposed to later when we get to the temple," Lloyd said, immediately receiving full attention from Zelos.

"Are we that close?" Sheena asked, her voice coated with surprise.

"Yes," Kratos, the bastard, replied. "We are about three hour's journey away from the first seal."

Zelos lowered his eyes to the dirt. He was glad he had taken a seat when he had. Suddenly, his gut felt like it wanted to leap out of his throat and do river-dances on his head. Falling to his knees was a little dramatic, even for him, and he had a feeling that he wouldn't have been able to control the weak-kneed reaction that the words had immediately given him. He clenched a fist around the pink fabric of his vest and bit his lip.

"After you release the first seal, we will know where to go from there," Kratos had the gall to add.

"Well, that's good. We wouldn't want to waste any time going through scenic paths," Zelos said sarcastically, opening his pack to take out a sandwich which had gotten maimed in the last fight and morphed into an unappetizing mound of ingredients.

"That one's all gross. Here, take one of mine," Lloyd urged, handing over a well-assembled sandwich that had been in Kratos's pack. Zelos took the sandwich, shooting the teenager a look of, 'I still don't like you', before he began to eat.

"What happens at the first seal?" Sheena inquired, easing onto her own bottom now. The brothers followed her lead and also took seats in the dirt.

The first seal was probably going to be something like the ceremony at the church, which had occurred the morning of the day Zelos had tried to kill himself. They had gone down into the depths of the building in the center of Meltokio and Zelos, alongside an entire staff of holy men, had to shut his eyes and pray and be chosen-like, something that had felt as awkward to him as it had looked to everybody around him. The playboy did not do holy prayers or, really, holy anythings well. Rumor was that his grandmother (the chosen before his father) hadn't been too hot at it either, although his father had been very skilled at appearing to be somewhat chosen-like. Leave it to Zelos to inherit all the less-than helpful traits from his lousy gene-pool.

The Day of Prophecy had been like somebody throwing a book filled with all his flaws straight at Zelos's face, reminding him just how unacceptable everything about him was in relation to his title. Open the book and it would read out facts in bullet-pointed certainty:

• speaks with too much slang

• stole communion wine as a child

• curses all the time

• promiscuous hobbies

• steals communion wine as an adult

And, by that point, Zelos would be bored with the listing off of his failures. If it weren't for his red hair and Wilder blue eyes, he would have thought his being appointed chosen had been a mistake. Alas, though, he had the genes to back up his title, just not the behavior.

At the beginning of the ceremony, while Zelos recited prayers in angelic, hands bunched at his chest and his shoulders slightly hunched, a beautiful angel had appeared, blonde, blue-eyed, with great white wings that stretched out and flapped in a slow cadence while she spoke. She communicated with conviction, something Zelos had learned to dislike throughout his life. Staying above him in the air, forcing him to crane his neck up to catch full sight of her, she smiled down at him and said, "I am Gabriela. I am an angel of judgment. I am here to guide Zelos, son of the mana lineage, on his journey to heaven as the sixteenth Chosen."

Zelos's eyes were locked on the beautiful angel, taking in the sight of her while he felt his stomach leap inside his body.

Journey to heaven.

"The time has come to awaken the Goddess Martel," Gabriella declared, her elevation dropping so she could place her petite feet on the ground. Zelos's eyes followed her as she continued, "who sleeps at the center of the world." Reaching out, Gabriella put her hand to the center of Zelos's bare chest, causing his breath to cut short. Her hands were cold and inhuman. They began to glow a pure white, radiating a holy illumination off of her and letting it make a place inside of him. The cruxis crystal, which had been inside of Zelos's pocket, had somehow made its way up into the grasp of the angel. A short pinch squeezed the nerves all over his collar-bone area, as though somebody had dug a foundation on his skin to make a home for something. He knew not what it was until he later looked in the mirror and saw the intricate works of his Cruxis Crystal, surrounded by a crest of golden metal, imbedded in his chest. The metal twisted about in a design befitting the trail of a snake and it stayed that discrepant consistency up until it reached his neck where it wrapped around and rested at the base of his muscular jugular like the collar on a beast. The tag of his collar was the red crystal itself, glowing ever-so-slightly no matter the light.

Gabriela, after bestowing this permanent branding of Chosen lineage onto him, looked into his eyes, as though there were not almost three dozen other people in the room and it was only them. "From this moment, you, Zelos, are the Chosen of Regeneration. We of Cruxis bless this event, and hereby bestow the Tower of Salvation upon Tethe'alla." The ground shook around them and Zelos stumbled backwards, grabbing at the arm of priest number four to look around in vain. The tower wouldn't be visible until they could get out of this hole in the dirt.

When Zelos managed to turn back at Gabriela, an expression of confusion on his face, she continued speaking, almost as if this were the scripted basics in a play called Teach the Idiot Chosen Why He's Here. Zelos thought it might be a real toe-tapper musical had it really existed.

"Zelos, the Chosen of Regeneration. Unlock the seals that guard the Tower of Salvation and climb its stairs to heaven in distant lands," Gabriela ordered in that soft chiming voice of hers.

"I can think of something a lot closer that I would rather climb but I guess this'll have to do," Zelos purred.

He couldn't figure out what was more rewarding, the gasps from the priests, or the look of distaste on Gabriela's pure features. She regained composure within nanoseconds and, although she still seemed irritated, she continued with her script. "We of Cruxis shall grant you the power of the angels with each seal you unlock. Once you are reborn as an angel, this eroded world shall be regenerated."

She awaited a response. Zelos, trying to think of one, wasn't really able to find one that fit the situation. He wasn't about to thank her. He decided on, "Mmmkay."

"You will first head north, to the seal of the Earth. Offer your prayers in that distant land," Gabriela instructed.

"Alright," Zelos replied, the fingers of his right hand now tracing along the metal-work of his crystal's crest.

Gabriela began to rise once more, only to disappear right before she would have made contact with the ceiling.

It had been an interesting show, Zelos could say objectively. He really hadn't figured that he'd actually be going to the temple to release the first seal, considering death was supposed to be a sure-fire way to avoid things rotting on a to-do list. However, he was stuck with it now along with the three body-guards who traveled alongside him.

"The first seal will be the introductory step in Zelos's becoming of an angel," Kratos spoke.

"How many seals are there again? Because I feel like this process is going to be kinda long," Lloyd added with a teasing smile to the redhead.

Zelos just rolled his eyes. "So funny." Sheena seemed to agree with his statement because she was giggling like a love-sick school-girl at Lloyd's jab.

Gross.

"Well, we're almost there," said Sheena. "I'm kind of interested. The seal is guarded by a real angel," she informed them.

"Coooooool," Zelos said with no energy.

"I wonder if it's an angel I know," Lloyd oddly remarked, getting weirded out looks from Sheena and Zelos. "You know, from the stories of the church," Lloyd quickly explained. "Maybe it's one of the old chosens!" he chirped.

"That would be cool," Sheena agreed excitedly. She turned her head to look at Zelos. "Maybe you can ask for some pointers on how to act like a chosen from them," she suggested dryly.

"I don't see why people blame me. It's not as if there's a manual I can read to catch up on Chosen duties," Zelos scoffed.

"I think it's about the same as acting like a priest or a man of the goddess, Zelos," Sheena responded.

"How fair is that though? I mean, c'mon, Sheena!" Zelos threw his hands in the air and laughed. "They get to choose that. Nobody is born into working for the church, at least not to the extent that a chosen is. You would think, if they're gonna get so damn huffy over me not being able to recite all of the chosen-y things that they expect that they would at least get me a book to read. Or maybe enroll me in some crash course! Now there's an idea!"

"The church should not have to waste time informing you of the correct way to behave in society solely because you were born without the ability to appropriately respond to those around you. It is not their responsibility to teach you your birthright," Kratos spoke.

"Then whose is it?" Zelos demanded.

"Typically, Chosens are taught how to behave by their predecessor. In your case, your father is the one you should be cursing as opposed to the church."

At the word "father", Lloyd's eyes flickered over to Kratos. Two brother mercenaries traveling about and working for the church? Zelos thought nothing of the look. He had always figured that Lloyd and Kratos's parents were out of the picture anyway. The comment had hit some nerve in Lloyd, to be sure, but it had hit twenty nerves in Zelos.

"My father can't do much six-feet buried in the Earth, but I'll let him know after this whole thing is through that you disapproved of his parenting techniques. It'll be a good way of further accentuating the fact that I didn't care for his methods either."

Kratos gave a hum of acknowledgment, although he did not bother articulating a response.

"Are you finished resting?" Sheena asked Zelos in a quick change of subject.

"I guess," Zelos stood up, flashing a smile in Sheena's direction. "If you want me to have energy for a late-night, camp-site wrestling session though, I may need to rest a little longer."

"Idiot," the ninja growled, continuing her pace so that she led the group. This would mean that Kratos would alternatively flank Zelos's sides as they walked so as to keep an eye on all angles. It also meant that Lloyd would be walking the closest to Zelos, slightly behind him.

Fantastic.

It wasn't so bad at first. Lloyd had noticed Zelos's bad mood and, having learned by way of all the bad moods before this one, had kept quiet so as to not fan the fire. At first, though, consisted of about ten minutes. Then Lloyd started talking.

"I know you two don't really click well, but he means well," the boy started out by saying.

"How could he possibly mean well?" Zelos laughed. "He's leading me to my execution."

"Oh! That reminds me. I always wanted to ask you about this," Lloyd said suddenly, causing Zelos to look over his shoulder at him with a dead-panned expression.

"You keep saying you're going to die. You're not though. You're going to become an angel," Lloyd said.

"You are really thick, kid," Zelos chortled. "What is an angel?" He asked.

"Well..." Lloyd gave Zelos a look, as though expecting this was a trick-question. "They're... They're soldiers for the Goddess Martel."

"And how does one become an angel, aside from being the Chosen?"

"Uhm... They go to heaven."

"How exactly do you get to heaven?"

"You die—oh."

Lloyd quickly scowled. "That's not fair though. If it was as easy as that, you wouldn't have to release the seals, you would just die. The whole journey is so you can be a living angel—have the power of those who had to die to achieve it except you don't have to die!"

Interesting way to look at it. Too bad Zelos thought it was bullshit.

"Yeah, well, you ever think that, living or dead, that I don't want to be an angel?"

"I have thought of that. I thought of that after I heard about what you did," Lloyd responded.

Zelos felt a smile twisting the corners of his mouth upward. "What I _did_. Why can't you just say what I did? Your brother seems to have no problem telling me about my mistakes, so you can take a page out of his book if you'd like."

"Because you did it and it's in the past. You didn't succeed, thankfully, so it doesn't matter," Lloyd responded. "Calling it by name just... It's not important, Zelos."

"Oh please," Zelos jeered, chuckles making his words trail off.

"Why are you laughing at me?!" Lloyd exclaimed in annoyance.

"Because you're an idiot," Zelos said. "Of course it matters that I tried to kill myself. You ever think that maybe that frame of mind might bleed into another frame of mind? Y'know, the kind that wouldn't think twice about deserting this journey to go do my own thing elsewhere?"

"You can't do that anymore, not unless you wore a coat tied up to your neck to cover up that Cruxis Crystal, and you know it," Lloyd retorted in a surprising show of intelligence. "Besides, if you thought that would have worked, you would have tried it first instead of doing what you did."

"Who says I didn't try it?" Zelos inquired.

Lloyd grew silent and he watched Zelos for some way to gauge those words.

"So what happened when you tried?" Lloyd asked.

"The cavalry tracked me down and dragged me back home, that's what happened, you backwards-brained, walking tamale. It's the same thing they did when I tried to off myself, so I really don't know why I thought I'd be able to control any aspect of my life, to be honest."

"... You can control your life."

"Y'know, if I knew how funny you were when we first met, I would have suggested you take to stand-up in Altamira as opposed to this messy mercenary business."

"Stop being a pain in the ass and listen to me for a second. Stop turning everything into a joke and just listen."

"Well, you've got my attention." Zelos lifted his right arm, flipping a limp-wristed hand up and away in lazy encouragement.

"You do control your life, Zelos. You control so many other people's lives too, but your's? You control that one the most. If you were nicer to people, maybe you'd understand that the only way to feel control is to gain respect." Lloyd looked away from Zelos over to the sky. "Nobody respects you though because you're an asshole."

"I liked that end part, but I'm not so sold on the rest of your spiel."

"Stuff like that!" Lloyd exclaimed. "You make your life so difficult on purpose with shit like that!" The sound of a curse-word from Lloyd's lips caused Kratos to send him a look of distaste and Lloyd waved at him in apology. Kratos, who understood that being around Zelos could greatly damage the filter of a person's vocabulary, let it slide.

"What do you suggest I do, wise one?" Zelos asked.

"I'm not suggesting anything except maybe you adopt a bit of polite conversation in your life," Lloyd mumbled.

"Hey, I try, but you guys aren't interested." Zelos shrugged.

"Well, you're wrong," Lloyd informed him. "We are interested."

Conversation flowed on and off like this for a while. Sometimes, by the end of the talks, Zelos almost convinced himself that Lloyd wasn't so bad. Then Lloyd would start spewing some religious zeal about how the church was really just trying to help Zelos, and the redhead would end up hating him all over again.

By the time they reached the temple that held the first seal, Zelos was in need of some new company. He attached himself to Sheena, much to her distaste, and the two watched as Kratos began to inspect the area, tracking a path long-worn by many feet over thousands of years. He paced along, his eyes searching the walls while Zelos reached out and began to fiddle with the ribbon around Sheena's waist, bored. Sheena gave him a look of annoyance, but she let him play with the cloth anyway.

Lloyd scrutinized the area, five paces behind Kratos and wide-eyed as he took in the sight of the temple, as though he'd never before seen a ruin. It barely registered to Zelos just how odd that was until much later. Considering how well traveled the brothers had claimed to be and how many ruins coated the lands from the Kharlan era, even if they'd never been inside of one of the ancient structures, surely Lloyd had seen one before.

"Chosen One, come here," Kratos urged.

"You finally ready to apologize?" Zelos asked as he strutted over.

Kratos pointed down to a stone pillar in front of them, ignoring the redhead's jab. Zelos, out of curiosity mostly, approached the pillar, his eyes scanning the Angelic language inscribed in the stone that, in a nutshell, implied only Zelos (the Chosen) held the key to this door. There was a place that would perfectly fit a palm, so Zelos problem-solved. He put his hand to the stone and the earth beneath their feet quaked as the door before them opened.

"Whoah."

"Wow."

"Hng."

Zelos's three companions ooh'd, awe'd, and grunted while the chosen smiled brightly, despite not feeling very impressed himself. "Hold your applause until the finale, I must insist. You'll all be worn out if you congratulate me on all my wondrous abilities," he said, a sunny grin lighting up his face.

Really, though, he had opened a door. On one hand, whoop-de-doo. On the other, Zelos did have to acknowledge that there was a very large chance that his lack of impression had to do mostly with the fact that this door led to a seal which would lead to his consequential angelification. That just didn't seem really fun to him, but a good actor always had to do things he disagreed with.

It was dim inside, which was to be expected given the fact that the temple was ancient and it wasn't as if the ancient people had really had an opportunity to find themselves a good electrician. Dusty as well, which was just as understandable. Housekeepers couldn't very well be afforded to keep on staff in a dead temple.

"I've always wondered who built the temples," Sheena said softly as she walked inside, a bit ancy now for a reason Zelos just chopped up to nerves.

"Easy. Temple builders." Sheena smacked Zelos for his sarcasm.

"The temples were built long before even the Kharlan War," Kratos uniformly said. The two young adults looked at him while Lloyd still stared at the scenery with his doe eyes. "There is no way to be sure who constructed them, but it is likely that the very first inhabitants of our planet, seeing the large collections of mana here, built them to worship entities."

"Entities huh? Like, what, gods?" Zelos asked.

"Summon spirits," Sheena answered, although he hadn't been asking her.

"Oh yeah," Zelos waved a hand in the air—he really couldn't believe he had forgotten about the Summon Spirits. They had been dormant for a while though—since his mid-teens when the world had fallen into ruin. He turned to Sheena and cocked his head to the left by a few degrees. "Didn't you used to have one as a pet or something? Y'know, that dog thing you had with you all the time."

"Corrine was not a pet, he was my friend," Sheena snapped at him, but the anger flipped into angst in typical Sheena moodiness. "He... He died."

"Shame," commented Zelos.

"When the world began declining?" Kratos asked.

"Yeah... Before, the world had a lot of Mana to spare, we could afford to create a summon spirit out of nothing," Sheena mumbled. "When the land began to die... Well..."

"He died too," Lloyd finished for her, his gaze finally directed over his shoulder at the ninja. His voice was soft and his face was warm with sympathy.

"Yes," Sheena said.

"Well, hey, that's why we're here, right?" Zelos piped, suddenly putting on a good face for Sheena.

"What?" scowled Sheena.

"We're here to open a seal—bring the world back to its former glory!" He twisted about on his heel so he was right in front of Sheena, his nose almost touching her's. He broke into a large grin and laughed, "We can avenge your pal for ya!"

"I thought you were the number one person against this journey," Lloyd said, suddenly confused.

"I can't stand to see my darling Sheena frown!" Zelos exclaimed. "If opening the seals opens up her mouth so I can see that beautiful smile—well, it'll be at least a little consolation!" He leaned forward and kissed her lips, because, hey, he might as well just go for the gold. Sheena's breath cut off in embarrassment and she shoved him away into the ground, the palm of her hand making contact with his face while her own cheeks were bright red.

Kratos hmphed and shook his head. "While I appreciate the lifting of your mood, let us continue." So they did. The four walked in a triangular formation. Sheena and Lloyd walked behind Zelos while Kratos walked directly in front of him, the three working as body-guarding points while Zelos stayed within the invisible walls of their protection.

As they walked, their boots clipped along in uneven cadences against the stone floor of the temple. Lloyd's feet were the loudest and he stomped along like the physical powerhouse that he was, his boots dragging against gravel and dirt and making a harsh noise as he did so, like rough sandpaper being repeatedly acquainted with even rougher sandpaper. Kratos, although he didn't galumph about like his brother, was the second loudest. His boots hit the ground heavy from the weight of his body accompanied with the weight from his packs and equipment. Zelos was third and he probably would have been quietest if it hadn't been for Sheena, who danced across the floor in silence as though gravity had no effect on her nimble feet.

They walked, crossing paths with a few forgettable beasts that Lloyd made quick work of, sometimes taking help from his brother and sometimes Sheena. Zelos sat back, occasionally casting a spell or two. He didn't see much of a point though. It wasn't as if he could offer anything up to the fight that Kratos couldn't easily mimic (although, Zelos found it worth noting that Kratos was positively hulking in his movements. If he were at a party, Zelos would have bet his entire estate that Kratos could not dance).

His icy eyes looked around the hallways and rooms, taking in the scenery quietly while they continued along. Angelic writing was inscribed deep within the stony corridors, and, as they proceeded further into the depths of the temple, the words became harder to make sense of. Sure, he was well-versed in the Angelic language—it was Chosen 101 after all—but he wasn't so fluent in phrasing on these walls. He could deal with a simple, "Place your hand on top of the pillar," order in Angelic. Where he began to get lost in translation was when the Angelic words started getting poetic. Zelos had never been a fan of poetry. He had tried to get into it (back when he considered himself to hold the potential of becoming an intellectual) and had found himself simply sullen with it all. How hard was it to just say that the flower was soft? That the sky was blue? That the world was shit? The fact that everything had to be romanticized only accentuated the fact that poetry couldn't sell itself as anything except for the scattered thoughts of some schizo writer and it most certainly could never be written as fact. That wasn't to say that Zelos hated all of the arts. On the contrary, he was a highly skilled pianist (back when people cared about music in Tethe'alla, the aristocracy had even ventured to say his musical abilities made him a prodigy) and painter. If you spent your childhood within the walls of a mansion, you'd probably pick up a few hobbies too though.

"Chosen One," Kratos's voice broke through Zelos's thoughts. When the redhead pulled himself back into the world around him, he realized they were standing before a stone door with a pillar that matched the one outside of the temple. He placed his hand on the pillar and the door opened.

"This is so cool," Lloyd said, bounding ahead of the group over to a large altar that matched the one where Zelos had received the oracle in Meltokio. Kratos followed after his brother, flanking so he was on the opposite side in a perfectly mirrored position.

"Hey," Sheena's voice broke through and Zelos tore his eyes away from the altar to look at her.

She was watching him with a troubled expression. "You... You ready to do whatever it is you do?" she finally asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure," Zelos shrugged casually, rolling back his shoulders so the bones clicked and popped. He jumped up and down, as though preparing to run a marathon. He only had the energy to do a few bounces before the remaining pain from his suicide attempt started to tug at the tendons in his legs in protest.

He strode up to the altar, staring into it as though there might be an instruction manual for this whole chosen thing poking out of the stone flooring. To his disappointment, there was no such manual but the altar glowed and reacted all the same, turning red and angry in the center of it. Zelos quickly took a few steps back, looking over his shoulder at the others in dismay.

"Uh, guys?!" he called to them uneasily.

"Be on your guard!" Kratos announced, already at work unsheathing his sword.

"Yeah, no shit! Why is it doing that?!" Zelos yelled back, turning his body completely to look over at the mercenary.

"You idiot! Get out of the—ah!" Sheena fell backwards and onto her second pair of assets.

In other circumstances, Zelos would have done the gentlemanly thing and laughed at her, but he felt it would be a bit hypocritical since the same quaking had sent him backwards as well. Kratos and Lloyd were the only two on their feet and even they were unsteady.

Suddenly there was an immense radiation of something hot right above the top of Zelos's scalp and his breath cut off as a panting cadence filled the air. After scrounging up some courage, Zelos lifted his head up to find himself face to face with a large beast, constructed out of the earth itself.

It looked to be animalistic in form, except for being made of stone like the temple around them. Its body crumbled as it breathed, showing tender skin inside of the deep stone crevices. Taking in a deep intake of air, the monster reared back onto its hind-legs, preparing to strike with large boulder talons. Zelos was frozen in place at the very sight.

"Zelos!" Sheena cried. "Zelos, move!"

Just as the beast pushed forward to strike—just as Zelos lowered his head in quick resignation for the release of death—there came the sound of metal hitting rock. Then the slurring balk of heavy, slamming, footsteps as Lloyd stomped forward three steps from beside him to be in front of Zelos so as to further strike down the monster.

Kratos was suddenly around the back of the beast, pulling the full attention off of Lloyd. Zelos scrambled up to his feet, moving back off and awayfrom the altar before pulling out his sword. He thought he'd just have to pray or whatever. He didn't know that he had to fight off monsters at the altar as well. Wasn't it good enough for that stupid Martel that he was even bothering to put in the frequent-traveler's miles to get to the damn temple in the first place? Apparently not.

"Zelos!" Sheena yelled, having gone into the fray herself.

"Right. Right."

And so Zelos advanced, his dagger drawn and his shield up and at the ready.

Five quick, long, nimble steps led him storming up to the beast, dagger lifting with adrenaline, and Zelos found himself joining in the battle cries of the others. He made enough of a note of the other three fighters just as to insure he wouldn't wound any of them in the battle. Mana surrounded and enveloped his body like a blanket of pure power, and it pushed his blade deep past the stone armor and into the belly of the bellowing monster.

Muscles led by magic caused Zelos's arm to jerk back, blade still tightly grasped at the handle, and blood squirted out onto his face. It dripped into the open orifice that gaped and panted as Zelos fought, coating his teeth and tongue with crimson. The world became defined by the gustatory perception of iron and salt. His stomach wretched and the floor underneath him shook, but nobody else seemed too affected by it. Blinking as sweat dripped into his eyes, despite his headband, he realized that he was not strong enough to be of real help from this point on.

His vision constricted and he took three steps back, bouncing from the balls of his feet and only stopping to plant himself when he was a safe distance away from the mountainous behemoth which crumbled and writhed against the dirt. Sheena used the foot of the rocky mammoth to propel backwards, flipping to keep up her momentum in the air so she could find her landing in a safe slide at Zelos's side.

Energy still ignited within the beast's being, though, and it tried to get back up. The struggling hellion's efforts were in vain. Lloyd and Kratos flanked along the sides of the rock colossus and proceeded to keep it down on its stomach. Kratos was working on piercing the chest of the monster where the rock build up was the thickest. The air screeched with the sound of metal against stone and Zelos found himself wincing as his eardrums hummed off-beat in his head.

Meanwhile, the younger Aurion pieced one sword into the opening Zelos had created and Sheena had widened. The other sword was sheathed while the offensive blade made a home inside the guts of the beast. Lloyd soon began to wrap his arms around the handle of his weapon, the leather binding snugging and bunching tightly against Lloyd's underarms. The teen kicked his feet out before tucking them back up so he was in the fetal position, wrapped around the weapon embedded in the shrieking monster. Then he kicked his legs out again, followed back another quick tuck. Within moments, Lloyd had become a bright red pendulum, hanging off the side of the beast as each swing ticked down the moments left in the monster's life.

Kratos was still working on getting to the place where the heart of the beast lied while Lloyd continued swinging, moving the blade into and across organs so they sliced open and agonized the mercenaries' enemy. Lloyd finally swung all the way out from the blade, twisting his body in the air so he made it up to the top of the monster's 20 feet tall body. His boots clanked against the stone and the beast squirmed in protest.

"Do not waste time! If you see an opening, take it!" Kratos bellowed from the ground level.

"If you're going to insist!" Lloyd laughed. It was a happy, cheerful, albeit cocky laugh that seemed out of place in the battle. Lloyd took the sword he had used to swing himself up out from the beast's side and then began to channel his mana deep within himself. Sheena ran away from the battle, her hand snatching at Zelos's arm to drag him away as well. Zelos followed dutifully, but found himself a bit confused.

"Hey, wait, they might need help—"

He turned back to the scene just in time to see Kratos duck out from the fight as well. Lloyd lifted both of his swords, glowing yellow in the dim cavern of a temple. With a loud yell that resonated from his strong chest, the powerhouse of a boy brought down both swords into the skull of the monster. It screamed and fell completely to the ground, no power left in its soul to do anything else. As it fell, all the energy that overflowed from the assault spilled out and around Lloyd's mounted stone devil, and it created a wave of golden destruction that streamed out fast from the monster's corpse and tore up the earth around them. The stone beast disintegrated into the dirt, and now Lloyd was standing in an open space, sheathing his weapons.

Well, Zelos could understand why Sheena, Kratos, and himself had been encouraged to leave the immediate fight zone. Getting hit by that mana overflow could have killed any of them if they hadn't been expecting it, which Zelos hadn't been.

Sheena's hand was still on his bicep, and Zelos smiled, although her gaze was locked on Lloyd hungrily. "I'm still here," he said in a taunting voice. "No need to touch me to make sure. Although, if you'd like, I could pinch you in some extra fatty places so you know I'm—ow!"

Zelos's perverse words were cut short by a slap over the head. "Idiot," she said, turning her attention back to him. Her face softened and it was then that Zelos remembered how weak he probably looked to her. How pathetic it seemed to almost pass out in a fight that had used very little of his help. "... Zelos..." She looked ready to continue with words rooted in sympathy, but the young ninja was cut off by a deep emerald glowing inside the altar that rang out with the voice of Gabriela.

"You, the Chosen of Regeneration. Offer your prayers at the altar."

Sheena and Zelos whipped their heads around to the altar, their eyes wide in surprise, as though they had both forgotten why they were there.

"Do you need help—"

"I got it," Zelos interrupted the youngest swordsman. He strolled away from Sheena, making sure to stay steady as he put one foot in front of the other. He reached the altar and felt six eyes on him, watching and waiting for him to offer the prayers at the altar. He felt his face flush and hoped that the group would just assume it had been the fight which had worn him down as opposed to embarrassment of being... _holy_.

He cleared his throat. "Oh Goddess Martel," he began, "great protector and nurturer of the earth... Grant me thy strength."

The top of the altar shined with a celestial illumination that opened like a womb to release Gabriela into their sight. Behind him, Zelos could hear Lloyd go, "Oh, I don't know that one," and then Kratos who gave a slight chuckle.

"The guardian of the seal has fallen, and the first seal has been released," Gabriela informed them. "Gnome will awaken very soon." A small blip of a gasp from Sheena at the mention of summon spirits. "In the name of Cruxis, I shall grant you the power of the angels."

Before Zelos can reply, he finds himself in a new world. Just a split second blink is long enough for Gabriela to drag him into a negative white space where he is up and floating in the air. He looks around and sees no one except Gabriela who is in front of him. Her eyes lock on his and suddenly he is shaking because of all the white and the red of his hair in his peripheral vision and she just—she looks so much like _her_.

Gabriela presses her hands to the base of his crystal's golden crest and Zelos's breath stops. There is a part of himself that he never knew existed writhing in pain within his body. He looks up at Gabriela, whispering, "Stop."

She does no such thing. She reaches deep into the crystal now, her hand disappearing in his chest, then her wrist, then her entire arm, and she grabs a hold of that writhing, raw piece of humanity and she steals a part of it, ripping it out of his body and retreating her hand back.

When Zelos reopened his eyes, he did not remember the white space or the wounded part inside him. He felt an appendage extend out behind him that wasn't there before and heard the gasping of Lloyd and Sheena as they saw his wings for the first time. The wings lifted him up and he raised his head to consider Gabriela, suddenly feeling more apt to give her a part of him.

"The angel transformation will not be without pain," she told him. "Yet, it is but for one night. Be strong and endure, Chosen One."

"I will," Zelos responded, and he truly felt that he would.

"The next seal lies far to the south, at the bottom of this continent. Offer your prayers at that altar," she ordered.

"Alright."

Just as she had done the morning of the oracle, she floated to the ceiling, disappearing just when she should have collided with matter. Her voice lingered and she spoke again. "I shall await you at the next seal, the Chosen of Regeneration, Zelos."

Zelos floated down finally to the floor.

"Wow, they're so... Orange," Lloyd said, breaking any semblance of intellectual offerings.

"Wow," Sheena seemed to agree with him, though, because she was also floored by the sight.

Zelos turned and looked at the wings and, sure enough, they were pretty orange. They fluttered and Zelos raised his eyebrows. He could hardly wrap his mind around the mechanics of them, but they worked, he knew that much just by how he was able to put them away.

"Oh, no," Sheena couldn't help but say, as if Zelos's wings were an enrapturing book she had stumbled upon that had been taken from her grasps just as she'd gotten to the good part.

"Can you bring them back out?" Lloyd asked. Zelos suddenly had a picture of a slobbering dog begging for scraps in his mind. All Lloyd was missing was a tail and some floppy ears. It was kind of endearing.

Zelos smiled and nodded. "Do you doubt me? Of course I can!" So he did, the wings illuminating the walls of the room again.

"The next seal is to the south," Kratos ruined the fun by saying. "We should leave and continue our journey."

Zelos took that as a sign that Kratos was not a fan of showing off, so he hopped down from the altar, hovering just before his feet touched stone. He put his wings away and touched ground, sending a smile over in Kratos's direction. "Lead the way then, Emperor Eggplant." Sheena smiled at the jab of all that purple (not that she was one to talk), and Lloyd laughed in good nature, as if he wasn't as much of a criminal in the world of fashion as his brother was.

When they left the altar room, Zelos couldn't help but feel as if Gabriela had been lying to him. Sure, he felt a little worse for wear, but not any more than he had before he had earned his wings. "That Gabriela doesn't know what she's talking about," Zelos boasted as he walked out at Lloyd's side, "I feel better than I did before we got here!"

"You are going to exhaust yourself," Kratos predicted.

"Oh whatever! I'm as strong as an ox!" Zelos laughed. "If anything, I bet I could take you on right now and win, that's how good I feel!"

"You're jinxing yourself, you moron," Sheena said with rolling eyes.

"I dunno, Sheena," Lloyd considered, "Zelos _did_ manage to nail a hit on that monster back there."

"Yeah, and I got in, like, twenty hits of that same strength," the woman scoffed. Kratos smirked and kept his gaze ahead as they walked out of the temple.

"Whatever," Zelos repeated. "That was before. This is now. I could totally—whoah." Just as Zelos walked three steps into the sun, he felt like his entire body had been slammed into by gravity itself, and, spoiler alert, gravity was pissed with him. He stumbled backwards and hit the ground so fast that his companions hadn't expected it.

"Zelos!" Sheena and Lloyd exclaimed, both kneeling beside him rheiard fast.

"His face is really flushed," Lloyd said a thousand miles away.

"What's happening?!" Sheena demanded from the top of a well.

"Like you said, he jinxed himself," Kratos's voice echoed, "The journey can be very rough on a Chosen's body. Gabriela warned..."

Kratos's voice faded out and all Zelos seemed able to do was repeat the same phrase over and over again in tiny whispers, the world turning black around him while he said:

"I'm as strong... as an ox..."


	4. Chapter 3

The trip to the campsite had been cloudy at best—an excruciatingly long trial where the idea of placing one foot before the other was quite possibly the hardest thing to grasp in his mind, let alone to carry out physically. Zelos had felt his feet moving, scraping at the dirt as they dragged him along and away from the temple, but he had been acting off of muscle memory and the help of the ninja at his side. Sheena's right arm wrapped around his waist, tugging him along as the brothers scouted ahead of them for a clearing suitable for their campsite.

She talked to Zelos the entire time they walked together, but it was muffled. As though she were speaking through clumps of cotton that were placed deep within her throat, it disabled him from catching everything that escaped her plump lips.

"It's okay... Just a little further."

She kept looking upward at him for reasons he didn't know, with something akin to fright on her features. Despite her fear, he kept on walking, a majority of his body weight leaning upon her as he did so. Although, as he waded through heavy air and sliding earth, he wondered why she suddenly looked so afraid.

Finally, Lloyd said something ahead of them, and Sheena stopped their journey. Gently, she eased Zelos down onto a rock that seemed to appear out of nowhere. She slid down with him and stayed seated beside his numbed body, twisting so her bosom pressed against his arm while she examined his face. Her hand lifted and she removed his headband, causing his hair to fall in front of his eyes. He blinked a few times, trying to will away the invasive strands from his already foggy eyesight and she used the headband to blot along his neck and he wondered why. She paused, the moment lacking in mobility so much so that it was impregnated with wonder and pain for Zelos.

He thought this moment was the longest he'd ever had because it was the last moment he would live. He thought he had died.

Sheena then moved once more. She eased him into a flatter position, trying to pick his body up as much as she could so he didn't get too dirty while also keeping his head elevated against the nearby stone. His body slid a bit more into the dirt than she intended and she grabbed him quickly before he could become completely horizontal.

Zelos felt his breath suck away at the air in a quick gasp and Sheena stopped her moving again. She held him, reclined, for a moment. Her right hand was warm upon his stomach while the other rested against the back of his neck, glove covered fingernails brushing right below his crimson hairline. When she was sure that he wouldn't slide all the way down into the dirt, she began placing a pack filled with softer items behind his head and the fingernails became like wide-ended, clothed needles that pricked his nerves. Finally, Sheena released a muffled sigh when the adjusting of his body was all done. She began to settle at his side when a voice floated through the air. "Sheena, will you help with the food?" Lloyd asked from afar.

"... Is it okay to just...?" Sheena tore her eyes from Zelos to look towards the boy with an unsure expression.

"I will watch after him," Kratos spoke up.

After a long pause, Sheena replied with, "Fine," and she was soon across the campsite helping Lloyd with the preparation of dinner.

Kratos padded over and took a seat beside Zelos, his purple hand stretching out ever-so-slightly to heal the redhead. Zelos's eyes shut, and he groaned a bit. He opened his mouth to speak. "That Gabriela wasn't kidding."

Kratos did not respond. At first, Zelos was irritated. It was all too typical for Kratos to act so childishly. He tried again. "Hey, asshole."

Not even a scoff from Kratos. Zelos began to wonder if he had spoken at all. He tried as hard as he could to reopen his eyes and found it to be impossible. It was what felt like years later when he managed to will the muscles of his lids to lift, only to see that night had fallen over them and Kratos, Lloyd, and Sheena were sitting by the campfire just ten feet away from him.

The stew in the bowls of his companions steamed with the fresh heat of preparation and Zelos could smell the game meat as the tendons of a beast's muscles withered and tightened from pink to the deep brown of cooked carnage. He imagined the blood that fell from the body of the animal as it was slaughtered for their evening meal. He imagined the carrots and the other vegetables that floated about in the hearty stew broth and the idea that they came up from the ground, covered in dirt and hugged by insects, further destroying his rotting inclination to eat. It was a soup made from the excrement of the earth—a disgusting food to feed their energy and it was salted to a tartness that allowed these abhorrent foods into the innards of their human bodies without causing an excusable retching induced by displeased taste-buds.

His eyes were able to tear themselves away from the repugnant meal that the three were eating, and onto their lips. They were speaking. Once he found the will to focus on the words, they were deciphered clearly and the aural fog was gone.

"Are you sure that he's going to be okay to travel by tomorrow morning?" Lloyd asked, his eyebrows pulled together while he poked at the stew with a pout on his lips.

"He will be fine." Kratos took a bit of the roast into his mouth. "He is simply adjusting to becoming a new being."

"A new being?" Sheena inquired, slumped over her meal like somebody might come along and snatch it away at any moment. She looked down at her bowl and rotated it clock-wise. "Like, an angel?"

"Precisely. You heard what the messenger, Gabriela, foretold," Kratos lectured Sheena and her forgetfulness.

"Well, he just doesn't seem very angelic," she retorted huffily. "So, sometimes, I guess I forget that that's the whole point of this journey." Sheena scoffed now. "We _have_ to have Martel's blessings for this journey. It'll take a miracle to make that guy even a little bit holy—"

"Hey." Lloyd had spotted Zelos's open eyes. Sheena's gaze followed Lloyd's and she finally made eye-contact with the conscious chosen. Her cheeks turned red, and a cough awkwardly escaped her throat before she turned away and coiled inward to stare into her stew as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. "How are you feeling?" Lloyd inquired, making a move to approach him.

"Better," Zelos exasperated. He lifted his hand to halt Lloyd's advancing. "Not that that's saying much," he added.

"You were pretty bad earlier," the boy reminded, "So it means enough."

"Are you hungry?" Kratos asked Zelos, eying him with a suspicious amount of insight.

"No... No, I'm alright," Zelos said. "I think I just need to sleep it off, y'know?"

"You're never going to get your strength back if you don't eat," Sheena's voice cut in like a harpy held knife.

"Well, think of it this way, hunny." He managed to rile up one of his more bitter smiles. "The less energy I have, the less likely it is that I'll talk. That's a positive for you, I'd venture to say," he retorted, shutting the flustered ninja up.

"Hey, don't be mean," Lloyd ordered.

"Considering I'm the one who gets to go through all the bullshit while you all sit around a campfire gossiping? I'd say that I can be as mean as I damn well please," Zelos informed the boy.

Lloyd placed his bowl of food down recklessly, broth splashing into the fire so the flames licked the air in a frenzy. "We were getting along pretty well back at the temple! Just go back to that!"

"Lloyd, stop encouraging him," Kratos said, having not moved since Zelos had first examined him. "He is simply baiting you."

The youngest member of the party leaned over, and he grabbed the ladle from the pot of stew, assembling another bowl. "I don't care if I'm being baited or not," he mumbled, "It's a waste of time for us to be fighting like this. This is a holy journey and we all keep fighting. It's ridiculous." His head shook in agreement. The boy dropped the ladle into the cauldron, and, in four long strides, he arrived at Zelos's side, kneeling so they were on eye-level. "You need to eat." Lloyd was insistent.

"I am going to stick that stupid bowl in a not-so-pleasant place if you don't get out of my face, crimson crusader," Zelos snarled in irritation.

Lloyd set the bowl down on a nearby rock before boldly leaning over and forcing the red-head to sit up. "Hey!" Zelos exclaimed, squirming in vain.

The swordsman finally felt that Zelos was upright enough, so he grabbed the thick broth and held it out once more, peering from a downward tilted position so his eyes appeared like those of an innocent doe fit for slaughter. "I am not eating that," Zelos growled. It was really out of spite more than anything now.

"Then I'll just feed it to you," Lloyd decided, already stirring the stew with a spoon.

As the spoon began to advance closer and closer, Zelos put his hands up over his mouth in protest. The spoon showed no signs of stopping and it crept on until the metal of the utencil was touching Zelos's knuckles, spilling stew onto the ground as Lloyd prodded repeatedly with it.

"You whined about wanting this stuff almost every day we've been on the road, and now you don't want it?" Lloyd looked at Zelos as though he were sick with a case of alien body snatcher's disease. And why shouldn't he have looked at him like that? The reason was well enough. Zelos had begged and complained for stew almost every day, and, now that it was there, he didn't want any? He didn't even want to try it? It was odd to anybody with eyes. Odd enough that even Lloyd noticed, and he wasn't exactly leading a pack of scholars back in Sybak.

Zelos removed his hands and snatched away the spoon, glaring at the boy who brightened up immediately, his head reigning back into regular position to beam a great white grin at Zelos. "You're trying to fatten me up so you feel better about yourself," Zelos dismissed.

The insistence from the swordsman made Zelos rethink his suspicion about Kratos knowing of the side-effects of the journey. Lloyd was a lot of things, but he wasn't cruel. If he knew that Zelos was... eating inept? Was that the right phrase? He wasn't sure if there was a technical term for angel induced appetite suppression, but it wasn't as though he had an opportunity to take Regenerate the World 101 back in school either.

Anyway, if Lloyd knew, he wouldn't force the food on him, right? And Kratos and Lloyd shared a brain, albeit a small one but a brain nonetheless, so if Kratos knew then Lloyd would have to know too. That was just logic. If Lloyd didn't know, Kratos didn't know. Sheena most certainly didn't know. Although she probably wouldn't care either.

But the idea of being even _more_ different from them—of sitting out at dinner and watching them eat and laugh while he sat afar with this inability to enjoy the food he used to love so dearly... He didn't want that. So, Zelos took the spoon and dunked it into the stew before he lifted it and dumped the hot substance onto his tongue, expecting something rank.

He was pleasantly surprised, but only in the way that a man who is stabbed in the kidney is thankful that he wasn't pierced in his heart. Taste-less. As though the buds on his tongue had finally gotten sick of his polarized preferences for spicy and sweet and had gone on strike to let him know about it. He never had anticipated that, one day, he would be lucky enough to lose a part of himself as integral as taste, but, even if he had tried to prepare for it, he doubted that it would have been sufficient. Stew without taste—just a warm bland mass of texture bouncing about in his mouth to quench an already dead appetite—it was as though he was a machine forced to chew. Like an android trying to be normal.

Zelos lifted his head and he smiled. "It's good, but I'm really just not that hungry."

"Oh, c'mon, just eat a few more bites. And _then_ you can go back to sleep," Lloyd urged.

"You have to keep your strength up," Sheena added.

"Fine fine!" Zelos rolled his eyes. "I swear, you two are exhausting."

"You're the exhausting one," Sheena input.

"Whatever. I'm eating I'm eating!" Zelos popped the spoon in his mouth again to show her what-for. It was even worse the second time around.

Astonishingly enough, Zelos didn't feel like staying up and bullshitting with his companions after being forced to choke down half of his dinner. He placed the bowl down beside his trusty rock just as Lloyd and Sheena began to converse back and forth in good nature. They paused to watch him as he sunk into the dirt and rolled away from them, but quickly continued with their conversation.

It was Kratos who walked over and placed a bottle of water by his head and it was Kratos who took the bowl back to the center of the camp-site where he then began to clean it.

It was unnerving how quickly Zelos was able to go to sleep.

With the weight of the first seal on his shoulders, Zelos felt numb. As days passed, the physical weight departed along with the time, and he fought at the side's of the others as the faced oncoming foes. However, the loneliness during the camp-fire meals replaced that physical agony with something that clawed deep inside of him. While he was healthy, his health did not halt that ping of dismay. His health did not stop the unnatural perseverance he was able to have either. As the others tired, he did as well, but only of their inability to follow him. He couldn't remember ever having so much ability.

Before long, they arrived at the base of the Fuji Mountains, staring up the winding, pale mountain paths and the group of four were wearing already winded expressions. Even Kratos was standing a little slumped. Zelos's nose scrunched up, but, just as he was about to complain, Lloyd took a deep breath. He released it in a long line of verbal complaints. "You're kidding me," the teenager groaned. His arms flailed at his sides as he hunched over, his mana having been apparently sucked away at the very sight of the hilly landscape. "This place is ridiculous. Can't we go around?" His hands limply waggled about below his hips in a dramatic show of exhaustion. Zelos half expected him to throw a fit on the ground, but he couldn't exactly argue with his lack of enthusiasm.

"I'm going to second that," Zelos raised his hand to say.

Sheena concurred. "Yeah, I'm with you guys on this one."

Kratos turned to look over his shoulder and sneer at the younger companions from the forefront of their party. "If there was another way, we would be taking it."

"There's gotta be another way," Zelos decided.

"The other paths are blocked by Desians," Kratos reminded.

"Can't we... Like... I don't know. Let's just fight the Desians and push our way through!" Lloyd suggested.

"No."

"You're not gonna budge on this, are ya?" Sheena asked, exasperated.

"No."

"Oh whatever, let's just move along then." Zelos threw a hand in the air and began to stride forward, taking the lead as they headed up the mountain. "I don't have the patience to talk sense into that thick skull anyway."

Lloyd followed last, but not before groaning, "Uuuugh," and dragging his boots against the grain of loosely packed dirt until the slope proved too steep to allow such immature behavior.

Moving forward, their feet fell into their usual, unified cadence, only breaking to take out monsters along the way. At the appearance of a small group of beasts, Sheena and Zelos held back, letting the brothers handle it. "I am already so done with this place," Zelos said, running a hand through his hair before letting it rest on his hip.

"You and me both," Sheena agreed, but her eyes stopped scanning the environment to lock on something behind the redhead.

"What?" Zelos question, and he turned his body to investigate what had caught the ninja's attention. Hidden behind a rock against the face of the mountain cliff was a narrow opening. From where Zelos stood, he only saw shadows behind the large boulder. Those shadows brought some sort of enthusiasm to Sheena that he didn't understand and she continued to waggle her finger at the crack in the bluff. "It's just some lame hole in the wall," decided the Chosen.

"I thought I saw something shine inside of it."

"Probably some kinda shiny rock. What does it even matter, Sheena?" Zelos leaned back up against a tree behind him. "Unless it's an elevator, I'm not interested in looking at it."

Just as Zelos reclined, he felt the tree behind him give way beneath his muscular back. He tensed, his ear drums catching the _tick_ under him inside the tree's surprisingly hollow trunk. He turned around, his eyes wide in surprise as he tried to locate the switch. Meanwhile, Sheena pointed at the opening behind the stone again. "Look!"

Zelos's head whipped around, the wind making his headband inept and causing strands of red hair to cloud his sight in a crimson fog. When he finally caught a glimpse of what Sheena's finger was stretched to show, Kratos and Lloyd had walked over and cut the sight short, replacing his vantage point view with their hideous purple and red buckle-happy clothing. "What are you guys doing?" Lloyd asked curiously.

"There's a cavern in there! A secret one!" Sheena exclaimed, waving her index finger about like a wiggling worm. The brothers followed her finger and took in the sight of the crack in the wall, which had opened wider to allow passage for even the largest of persons. Lloyd looked at Kratos for his opinion, which the mercenary was quick to give.

"It is just a cave," Kratos announced. "Let's continue."

A light-bulb flashed on in Zelos's head, and he was shocked he hadn't thought of it sooner to be quite honest. "Mine."

"The mountain belongs to everybody, Zelos, don't be greedy—" Lloyd's joke was interrupted though.

"Mine. A mine. Like a mining tunnel," Zelos reiterated. By the vacant expression on the teen's face though, the chosen could plainly see that Lloyd was not connecting the obvious dots.

"If it's a tunnel, we can cut through it and onto the other side!" Sheena chirped excitedly.

"That would make the journey for today be split in half,_ easy_." Zelos puffed his chest out, taking credit for the mine discovery with typical Alpha Dog attitude.

"The mine is probably overrun with Desians," Kratos spoke up. The guy was always looking for a way to dampen the mood. At this point, having dashed dreams was just a Pavlov dog's instinct when that deep stoic voice vibrated through anybody's eardrums, especially Zelos's.

"So?" Sheena's hip popped out to the right an impressive amount and her wrist flipped against the bone of her pelvis so her fingers pointed behind her body. "It'll be worth it. Besides, the Desians are our enemies."

"Only if we antagonize them," the eldest of the party reminded.

"Don't you think those assholes need a bit of antagonizing though?" Zelos asked. "For their outfits alone. I mean, their entire uniform is criminal. Never mind the fact they're, like I said before, total assholes."

"Yeah, but the Desians can regroup," Lloyd said, talking with an uncharacteristic amount of strategist forethought. "They're all over Tethe'alla too. If we piss off a few, we piss off them all."

"Not like you to discourage a battle, red-hot." And it wasn't, but Zelos's call out was more about gauging a reaction from the teen than it was about stating the obvious. "What's the deal with that?" He smirked. "Ya scared?"

Lloyd's cheeks turned pink and his head reared back. "I'm not scared!"

"Well, then," Zelos chimed with a grin, "No reason not to go through the mines then!"

"We're going around." Without waiting for compliance or argument, Kratos turned and began to walk along the path they had previously been traveling along.

Just the audacity that Kratos would expect obligation from Zelos to follow was enough to make his blood boil with a temper so hot that it leveled with the intensity of the sun's fire. As Kratos walked away—Lloyd starting to follow—Zelos lifted his chin up high and turned on his heel towards the cavern. "Have fun with that, I guess." Zelos grabbed Sheena by hooking his arm around her shoulders, covering her flustered squeak with his continued commentary. "We're going through here."

He turned with the ninja who whispered, "Zelos!" up at him in surprise that he would act so boldly in regards to Kratos, somebody who, although difficult, was typically not a person worth playing catty games with.

"Chosen one, you are under our protection. As the mercenaries hired we were given this task because of our specific qualifications. These qualifications were found suitable and also irrefutable by the entire Church of Martel along with the Royal Family," Kratos said behind them. What a name-dropper.

"Wow. Impressive. Then I hope, with a hefty resume like that, you know how to protect me while you take the long route. Because I'm just going to head on through this here mine, thank you very much." Zelos patronized by just barely looking back at the stiffly standing swordsman. For good measure, he took his free hand and used it to whip out the back of his vest like a dismissive cape.

Suddenly, Zelos felt a hand push at his side which wasn't shielded by Sheena. Kratos was then walking past him, a heaviness in his step that was newly weighted by irritation, to check out the innards of the mine tunnel to assure that the path was safe. Looked like Zelos could still taste a sweet victory every now and again. And, oh boooy, this one was _definitely _sweet. Kratos stayed in front, his body able to walk in a perfectly straight line despite his contained fury as he entered the cavern. Sword drawn, he looked around in the bowels of the darkness for any sign of Desian activity. After a moment he turned out to the others, clearly annoyed that something hadn't attacked and proven him right. "You may proceed."

"See? What did I tell ya? You two are worry warts! I blame that on that shared little brain you guys have," Zelos chimed, waltzing in with Sheena still glued to his side (not by her choice, mind you).

With a screech that tore open the calmness of the air, Zelos jumped back with Sheena. Through the shadows reared a monster that lifted its great form upwards until its hideous face pierced through the light. One angry red eye lay centered upon its forehead and its mossy colored, leathery hide of a skin was decorated with long lines of white, lifted, veins. A stench permeated the stale air as it moved, as though the smell oozed from its movement, and it reached out from the abyss to swipe at Kratos's body with three giant talons that ripped the dagger out from the older man's hand. With a grunt that resonated from deep inside his chest, Kratos stumbled backwards and into a heap on the ground, his hand sliced deep and bleeding in quick _drip-drips _onto the floor.

Purple, usually quick as a whip to react in any situation, stayed frozen on the ground, his hand lifted up like he couldn't believe what had happened, while his eyes, wide like the base of the mountain they stood on, stared up at the bellowing beast before him. The monster shrieked again and Zelos could have sworn he heard, "Dad," somewhere in the wavelength of the cry. With that, Lloyd ran quickly into the fray, his swords drawn as he began to pummel the monster before it could make a victim of his brother.

It cried out again, almost with a voice like a human, but Lloyd continued to fight, regardless of any humanitarian pains it might have caused. Kratos was soon back up on his feet, slow at first, but quickly he buried whatever had frightened him deep inside and proceeded in fighting alongside his kin. The being whipped its large ape-like arms to and fro about the small cavern, smashing sharpened claws into the walls of the cave so that the rocks quivered and broke under the strain, making them drop to the ground like pebbled rain.

"Together!" Kratos yelled to Lloyd, and the two pierced the red, crystallized oculus with their blades, letting the beast drop to the rocky floor in a show of brotherhood swordsmanship.

Sheena had stayed pinned to Zelos the entire time the ordeal had gone down, at first because of his tight embrace, but it had later dissolved into a matter of shielding themselves from the greater part of the battle. They stood just barely inside the cave, having backtracked at the mere sight of an altercation arising with the humanoid monster. The ninja lifted her head and asked in a soft whisper, "Did that thing... Did it just yell, 'dad'?"

Dad.

Zelos looked at Kratos, barely under thirty in his age. He could not see the eyes of the mercenary, but that told him a lot in and of itself. As he stood motionless, his younger brother took the body of the monster into the depths of the cave, letting it disintegrate into dust in the darkness where Kratos's gaze couldn't reach. Lloyd had specifically taken the beast in the opposite way of Kratos's forward facing form.

Kratos, the man who could kill anything without a second thought. A man, while not Zelos's favorite, who could do everything with such conviction. He had faltered at the sight of this watermelon mutant mammoth. It had hardly been a challenge, but it had to have resonated in some way with the heart of the man Zelos was currently looking at.

Kratos had gone into the cave expecting a fight, yet he'd been caught off guard.

Dad.

It was all very strange if anybody cared enough to ask for Zelos's opinion. If he ever felt compelled to tell a story in the future to somebody about something weird, he'd probably tell them about the fighter who had been scared by such a harmless assault. Not that people often confronted Zelos with the demand of a strange story while on a journey to regenerate the world, but it always helped to be prepared for every sort of circumstance.

Suddenly, Kratos's head lifted and his one visible eye locked onto Zelos. The redhead felt himself straighten a bit, swallowing back any more wandering theories. Kratos crossed his arms and spoke. "This cave does not cut through. We'll need to continue our journey by the way of which we were already proceeding." And with those words, the mercenary left the cave, Lloyd stumbling over himself to stay hot on his trail.

"Dad, huh." Zelos wasn't going to let that lack pursuit for long. He took two hot steps forward before Sheena yanked him back with a visceral grip wrapped on a good portion of his hair. "Ow! Hey! What's the deal!?"

"Don't be an ass," she hissed at him. "He's obviously riled up. I know you probably don't care but don't pour any salt into his wounds."

"Why not?!" he exclaimed. It seemed only fair that he did just that. He had hardly any leeway on Kratos and the mercenary seemed to know everything about him, so why not pry into his life? "It's not as if he hasn't started this!"

"It'll upset Lloyd and he hasn't started anything," Sheena informed him with a snarky lift of her eyebrows and a release of his hair.

For some reason, those words changed his mind, and he let Kratos and Lloyd go on ahead of Sheena and himself.

One day.

It took one full day of hiking and fighting and whining and torture to get through that hellish mountain. Even with his physical endurance heightened, Zelos was a step away from just flying off the mountain and letting himself drop from the sky in another attempt to kill himself because it was too much. It was too much boring. The entire thing was just unbearable and he couldn't stand it and, when they finally got through the mountain, he was so overwhelmed with joy and good feeling that he grabbed Lloyd, the closest person to him, and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek while crying out over and over, "There is a Goddess! We're done with that mountain!"

Then Kratos had reminded him, as Lloyd groaned and grumbled and wiped spit from his cheek, that they still had a ways to go until they reached the temple and then even longer _still_ to the next seal and then to the seal after_ that_ and Zelos was in a bad mood all over again.

A straight journey to the temple in the southern part of the continent got them to where they needed to be in about four days time, to the temple known as the Temple of Darkness. It was sort of ironic, being at the Temple of Darkness while being known as a beacon of light for the world.

However, when they reached the temple, a problem made itself known. Surrounding the ancient structure were security measures of a modern time, all branded with the same company crest. They built walls around walls and required key-codes. The Lezerano Company had locked them out with their metallic locks and computerized mechanisms, and the unmanned machines beeped obnoxiously as the group searched the landscape for some hole in the gates. No hole was present though.

"This is insane!" Lloyd said as Kratos entered another incorrect password in the most prominent gate lock, causing the fence to buzz in a loud error noise. "These stupid machines are abandoned! What does Lezerano gain from nobody being allowed inside? Other than being complete assholes?"

"Maybe they're mining something from inside?" Sheena suggested.

"It's the temple of darkness, Sheena. Not exactly something you can capitalize on," Zelos scoffed, his arms crossed over his chest as the fence buzzed again.

"... We have to get inside though," Lloyd whined.

"Our options are either to continue trying the codes—" Kratos winced as another password came out incorrectly. "— which has an endless possibility of number combinations, or... " the machine buzzed again and Kratos spoke again with an amusing amount of vindictiveness, "We destroy the equipment."

"Should we make an enemy out of Lezerano though? They're kind of a big deal," Sheena said.

"They're not giving us much of a choice, locking us out like this! I say we just barge through!"

"I don't care," Zelos shrugged. He could fly over the fence, so honestly it would be on them if they broke anything. "You guys do whatever you want."

Kratos took a step back, looking at Lloyd to give a nod of encouragement. The youngest of the group took a step forward, unsheathing one sword to swipe through the electrical locks with an unneeded amount of power. For good measure (or maybe because of frustration), he swung a few more times, opening a large hole in the dying electrical wires so the group could pursue through the gap with no problem.

As they entered the dim temple, the opening altar stone being unused due to Lezerano already prying open the building, the card-fighting member of their group cracked her knuckles against her back and stretched.

"This is getting easier," Sheena commented, looking over at the men as she spoke.

"Fighting and building up our physical defenses have become innate—at least, in relation to you two, the fights are training you to become competent fighters," Kratos replied, glancing at Zelos before turning back at Sheena.

"Does it, like, physically pain you to be nice to people or are we just special?" the ninja scoffed.

Lloyd smiled over his shoulder. "You two do pretty well though! You haven't been fighting like this for very long, but you're keeping up with no problem!"

Zelos rolled his eyes. "I'm really touched by this exchange," he began, "But can we keep on moving? This place is creepy."

"Agreed."

With a bit of maneuvering through mazes set up by Lezerano security (which were all annihilated by Lloyd when they came upon the barriers), they reached the main altar, a dark and untouched part of the temple. Maybe somebody on the Lezerano staff was superstitious and religious enough to know just where the line was drawn when it came to defacing a temple.

"Stay back this time," Kratos urged Zelos.

"You don't have to tell me twice." The chosen lifted his hands and took two skip jumps backwards. "I'm not about to get dragged into the front lines of a surprise attack again."

Lloyd drew his swords, starting to pace the front of the group like a caged lion, his path running parallel to the altar and every curve in its foundation. Some people were born with an innate talent to fight, and that talent seemed to run through the Aurion brothers' blood. Back and forth, Lloyd's feet carried him along the edges of the unstirred chantry.

"C'mon! You're not scared are you?" the teenager called out, patronizing and cocky.

"Yeah, get the monster all pissed off before it tries to kill us—that's a brilliant idea," Sheena mumbled.

"Chosen One, take out your wings and make yourself known," Kratos urged.

"What?" Zelos frowned. "Red hot is doing a swell job making us known right now—do I really have to—"

The bowels of the altar bubbled with blackness and the lights shut off around them.

"Damnit! Here it comes!" Lloyd yelled, disoriented through the darkness.

Lloyd had his swords lifted in defense over his face, further blinding himself from the sight of any oncoming attack. Zelos looked over, seeing Sheena backing away with her arms lifted as well. Kratos, however, looked as gathered as he usually did- as though his sight was just as advanced as Zelos's.

A deep growl came from the snarling muzzle of a transparent monster and it lifted from the ground like a black fog. It eased closer to Lloyd in the darkness, growling from every orifice now, as though every part of it gave way to cardiac path.

Kratos ran forward as soon as the monster got too close to his brother. "Light the room!" he yelled. "Keep your guard up!"

Sheena bolted from Zelos's side, moving to light all of the lanterns that had been extinguished with the summoning of the beast. Meanwhile, Zelos shut his eyes and let his wings stretch out, as though they were pinned to the air itself.

Darkness versus light. Light always wins. Right?

He hunched his back a bit, hiding away his praying hands from those who might catch him in such a distinguished position. Shutting his eyes, he did not lose sight of his enemy. He felt it flow around him, as though he was fighting every inch of shadow that covered the room—that covered the earth.

The words were buried deep within his heart. The incantation had haunted his dreams ever since the first seal had been opened. Using it now, he knew he would smite the beast with its power.

"_Holy wings, gather here and reveal our Lord's will... Angel Feathers!"_

Light. It fell from thin air into the darkness and eliminated it, causing the beast to scream. The mercenaries halted their assaults and Sheena quickened in lighting the room. Every dainty feather that touched the black monster burned it into oblivion. Never had Zelos witnessed such beauty in a massacre.

"Wow."

"Whoah."

Sheena and Lloyd said in unison.

As the dust cleared, the darkness did as well, and a light resonated deep from within the altar. Like the bells of victory ringing at the end of a festival, Gabriela's voice sounded against the walls and through the eardrums of the panting, winning group. Zelos felt his wings involuntarily flutter and he stumbled forward by an inch at the re-acquaintance with the angel's sweet voice.

"Chosen of Regeneration… You have done well in reaching this far. Now, offer your prayers at the altar."

It was as though his heaviness left him and he took a few steps forward after muttering a soft, "Yes."

In front of the altar, Zelos lowered his head, his stomach doing a backflip in the innards of his gut. The words came easier to him this time than they had at the previous offerings. Perhaps a class wasn't necessary after all.

"Oh Goddess Martel, great protector and nurturer of the earth, grant my thy strength."

His body lifted upward, his wings gently fluttering in a slow cadence to bring him up. When he opened his eyes again, he did it at the beckoning of a cold, nimble finger under his chin. Gabriela had appeared to meet him, and she was staring deep into his eyes with her own optical gateways that led deep into some sort of cold soul. "You have done well, Chosen One." She smiled softly and then did something that made his breath stop dead in his lungs. "Zelos." Her fingers dropped from under his chin, and the smile stayed upon her lips, as though she knew how much it meant to him to hear his name spoken. "The second seal is now released. Accept this blessing from Cruxis. I hereby grant you additional angelic power."

The white space is back, holding him tighter and dragging him into a dense mass that he cannot see. The colors fade deep into an off tint, churning around him as his world closes in, and Zelos feels the fear deep within him rear its head, so he screams, because Gabriela is going to do_ it_ again.

She presses her hands against his chest, pressing her lips to his ear to whisper, "Don't be afraid," and that only succeeds in feeding into his fear that much more.

Then one hand reaches deep into the crystal for the writhing part inside of him that she injured last time. It tries to limp away like a wounded deer, but she rips off another one of its legs again, causing Zelos to scream. His humanity falls, now crippled to the point that it can only lay down and cry within him.

She pulls the chunk of his soul out and smiles as she pulls it inside of her, before she brings him back, ignorant, to the real, hateful world of Tethe'alla.

"A-ah," Zelos gasped, lifting his eyes to look at the warmly smiling Gabriela. His wings fluttered behind him and he found himself biting on the inside of his cheek as she spoke to him. "The next seal lies far north, in a place that gazes upon the end and electricity pulses the earth. Offer your prayers at the altar in this distant land."

"Electricity!? You don't mean Volt's Temple—!"

"Be quiet." Kratos cut off Sheena's sudden outburst and Gabriela was suddenly sneering at the ninja in disgust.

"Thank you," Zelos spoke up quickly, making Gabriela's eyes ricochet back to him. He smiled a bright smile.

"I will be waiting for you at the next seal. Do not disappoint me, Zelos."

She disappeared so suddenly, but never had Zelos wanted her acceptance more. The coldness in her eyes. The way her hair framed her face so beautifully. The way it curled down her back and flowed so effortlessly. He couldn't stand how much he loved this angel. He couldn't stand how much she made him miss his mother.

With the thoughts of Mylene Wilder plaguing his mind, he really couldn't remember the journey out of the temple. He honestly couldn't remember anything until three days passed, although he knew that he didn't sleep in any of that time.


End file.
